This privacy notice tells you what to expect when Solar Bear collects personal information. It applies to information we collect about:

Visitors to our websites

complainants and other individuals in relation to a data protection or freedom of information complaint or enquiry

people who use our services, eg who subscribe to our newsletter or request a publication from us

people who we notify under the Data Protection Act

job applicants and our current and former employees

Visitors to our websites

When someone visits www.solarbear.org.uk we collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns. We do this to find out things such as the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. We collect this information Google Analytics. We do not make any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website. We will not associate any data gathered from this site with any personally identifying information from any source. If we do want to collect personally identifiable information through our website, we will be up front about this. We will make it clear when we collect personal information and will explain what we intend to do with it.

Use of cookies by the Solar Bear

Cookies are small text files that are placed on your computer by websites that you visit. They are widely used in order to make websites work, or work more efficiently, as well as to provide information to the owners of the site.

The table below explains the cookies we use and why.

Cookie

Name

Purpose

More information

Solar Bear Website cookie acceptance

plg_system_eprivacy

This cookie is used to record if a user has accepted or declined the use of cookies on the Solar Bear website.

This cookie is required.

To withdraw your consent after accepting this cookie, delete the cc_cookie_accept cookie. Find out how at www.aboutcookies.org

Google Analytics

_utma

_utmb

_utmc

_utmz

These cookies are used to collect information about how visitors use our site, which we use to help improve it. The cookies collect information in an anonymous form, including the number of visitors to the site, where visitors have come to the site from and the pages they visited.

Click here for an overview of privacy at Google

This cookie will be loaded unless explicitly denied.

CMS Session cookie

Random 32 character hex sequence

This cookie is essential for the correct operation of the website.

This cookie is required.

Ends when the browser session ends.

There are two different versions of this session cookie.

CMS Built-in statistics system

cltid

trcusr

This cookie is set by our content management system for anonymous visitor site usage analysis.

This cookie is required.

This cookie is only used by our site.

Site Animation

Jpanetabs_*

Jpanelsliders_*

varying function names are displayed here

These cookies are used by our on page animations etc. It is used to remember the state of opened/closed sliders/menus etc.

sIFR (or Scalable Inman Flash Replacement)

sifrFetch

This cookie is there to stop needless pre-fetching of data. It related to the use of the sIFR system for displaying enhanced fonts.

A session cookie, design to exlpore at the end of the visit.

Most web browsers allow some control of most cookies through the browser settings. To find out more about cookies, including how to see what cookies have been set and how to manage and delete them, visit www.aboutcookies.org or www.allaboutcookies.org.

To opt out of being tracked by Google Analytics across all websites visit http://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

YouTube cookies

We embed videos from our official YouTube channel using YouTube’s privacy-enhanced mode. This mode may set cookies on your computer once you click on the YouTube video player, but YouTube will not store personally-identifiable cookie information for playbacks of embedded videos using the privacy-enhanced mode. To find out more please visitYouTube’s embedding videos information page.

Complaints or queries

Solar Bear tries to meet the highest standards when collecting and using personal information. For this reason, we take any complaints we receive about this very seriously. We encourage people to bring it to our attention if they think that our collection or use of information is unfair, misleading or inappropriate. We would also welcome any suggestions for improving our procedures.

This privacy notice was drafted with brevity and clarity in mind. It does not provide exhaustive detail of all aspects of Solar Bear collection and use of personal information. However, we are happy to provide any additional information or explanation needed. Any requests for this should be sent to the address below.

Access to personal information

Solar Bear tries to be as open as it can be in terms of giving people access to their personal information. Individuals can find out if we hold any personal information by making a ‘subject access request’ under the Data Protection Act 1998. If we do hold information about you we will:

give you a description of it;

tell you why we are holding it;

tell you who it could be disclosed to; and

let you have a copy of the information in an intelligible form.

To make a request to Solar Bear for any personal information we may hold you need to put the request in writing addressing it to our Information Governance department, or writing to the address provided below.

If you agree, we will try to deal with your request informally, for example by providing you with the specific information you need over the telephone.

If we do hold information about you, you can ask us to correct any mistakes by, once again, contacting the Information Governance department.

Disclosure of personal information

In many circumstances we will not disclose personal data without consent. However when we investigate a complaint, for example, we will need to share personal information with the organisation concerned and with other relevant bodies. Further information is available in our Information Charter about the factors we shall consider when deciding whether information should be disclosed.

You can also get further information on:

agreements we have with other organisations for sharing information; circumstances where we can pass on personal data without consent for example, to prevent and detect crime and to produce anonymised statistics; our instructions to staff on how to collect, use and delete personal data; and how we check that the information we hold is accurate and up to date.

Links to other websites

This privacy notice does not cover the links within this site linking to other websites. We encourage you to read the privacy statements on the other websites you visit.

Changes to this privacy notice

We keep our privacy notice under regular review. This privacy notice was last updated on 18 March 2015.

How to contact us

Requests for information about our privacy policy can be emailed to the Information Governance department or by writing to: